


Tony Stark's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party

by Maiden_of_Asgard



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Loki - Fandom, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Avengers Family, Avengers Tower, Domestic Avengers, Gen, Halloween, Irondad, Loki & Tony Stark Friendship, Parent Tony Stark, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2021-01-15 15:03:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21255284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maiden_of_Asgard/pseuds/Maiden_of_Asgard
Summary: Genius, billionaire, (former) playboy, philanthropist, husband, father, and semi-retired superhero Tony Stark only has one objective this Halloween: to give his kids the best spooky slumber party of their lives.





	Tony Stark's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Halloween! <3
> 
> This fic is set in the same universe as [Deus Domesticus](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17280179)

In Tony Stark’s opinion, his daughters were absolutely perfect. Sure, they might be a lot to handle sometimes, and they had a snarky streak that he was most likely to blame for (not that he’d admit it to Pepper), and hell, they might even be a _ little _ spoiled. But, really, what was the point of being Tony Stark if he couldn’t spoil his kids?

And so, when Morgan declared that she wanted to have a slumber party for Halloween instead of going out trick-or-treating, Tony had been happy to agree. Pepper was supposed to be out of town, anyway, and keeping the kids in the Tower seemed like a fairly peaceful way to spend the night. He’d load them up with candy and pizza, put on some age-appropriate spooky movies, and kick back and enjoy being the greatest dad in the world. 

It would be a fairly small party, and both Morgan and Alex seemed incredibly excited. If he was being entirely honest with himself, Tony was excited, too. It wasn’t that he resented all of the boring, everyday parts of parenting - they came with the territory - but the idea of having a night where he could dress up in a costume, eat a bunch of candy, and hang out with his kids without having to pretend to enforce bedtime sounded like a pretty perfect evening. 

He was even considering rigging up one of the halls into a kind of child-friendly haunted house. It was going to be _ great. _If he was lucky, he’d even manage to scare Alex, and Alex was almost unnervingly difficult to scare. The kid had nerves of steel. 

His excitement dropped a notch or two the afternoon before the big day, following a phone call with Loki - Loki, who’d _ promised _ he’d be on-call at his apartment in the Tower to come wrangle his children, if they got too out of control during the slumber party. Apparently, Mrs. Mischief hadn’t had a date night in ages, and Loki had decided to surprise her with a romantic getaway. 

Tony glared at his phone. It wasn’t that he disliked Loki’s twins. Andora and Asrun were fantastically strange, and when they weren’t accidentally blowing up his tech with their prepubescent magical temper tantrums or turning random objects into snakes, he’d say they made pretty good company, as far as five-year-olds went. The problem was, when their parents weren’t around, they _ did _ tend to blow things up and turn them into snakes. Asrun had even turned _ herself _ into a snake, once, and Loki had been off on a mission and completely unreachable. 

Luckily, Tony hadn’t been stuck babysitting for that one, but he imagined Banner still had nightmares about it. 

He’d planned to have a word or two with the God of Mischief when he swung by the penthouse to drop off the twins, but that plan was completely derailed once he saw Dora and Asrun’s costumes. “Is that… is that my suit?” Tony asked weakly, not sure whether he wanted to laugh or cry. There was no doubt that Dora was wearing a nearly-identical replica of the Iron Man suit… except it was green and gold, and it had horns. 

“I am Iron God,” she bellowed, her voice tiny and completely non-threatening. She brandished a wooden hammer, and Tony decided that he should probably be flattered that he’d ranked up there with her dad and uncle for Halloween costume inspiration. 

“You sure are,” Tony said, and then he crouched down by her sister, smiling to mask any of his anxiety. _ They’re just kids, _ he reminded himself. _ Loki’s kids, but they’re still only kids. _“And that’s a really nice Wonder Woman costume, Bluebell. I like the tutu.”

“Wonder _ Princess,” _Asrun corrected, the disappointed shake of her head indicating that she pitied him for his shameful ignorance. 

Tony didn’t know what to do with that. “Right. Wonder Princess, my mistake.”

“I forgive you,” she said very solemnly, and behind her, Loki pretended to cough to smother his laughter. 

“Run along and play, darlings,” Loki said, patting both of them on the head. “Be good for Uncle Tony, won’t you?”

“Yes, Daddy,” they both chimed, but by the way they were giggling as they took off toward Morgan’s room, Tony imagined that there was an infinitesimally small chance of them adhering to any promises of good behavior. 

“I mean it, you two!” Loki called after them. He turned back to Tony, a lazy, amused sort of smile on his face. “Ready for the most terrifying night of your life, Stark?”

“Are you sure you don’t want to stay and hang out?” Tony replied. “Halloween seems like your thing. Trick or treat? Witches and black pointy hats?”

“I haven’t had a night alone with my wife in ages. I’m nearly as desperate to get out of the Tower for the evening as she is, though I’ll admit that I am impressed by your decorations.”

“Thanks. Crepe ribbons are actually harder to handle than you’d expect.”

“If they do become too much for you to handle,” Loki said a bit more seriously, “call me. I’ll project their mother, and she’ll give them a talking-to they won’t soon forget.”

“Will do.” _ See? _ he told himself. _ Nothing to worry about. _

Loki paused in the doorway. “And Stark? We’ll take the girls next weekend, if you and Pepper need an escape. It’s only fair.”

“That might actually be a good idea. With all of the security concerns lately, they’ve been feeling kind of cooped-up.”

“Well,” Loki said, “you know that they’ll be safe with me. I _ am _ the most powerful Avenger, after all.”

He disappeared in the doorway in a shower of sparks. _ Showoff. _Tony sighed. How had he ended up with Norse deities as babysitters? And not just any Norse deities - Loki had once been near the bottom of the list of people that Tony Stark would have trusted with his hypothetical future children, yet here they were, arranging play-dates and talking about their wives.

_ Truth is stranger than fiction, _Tony thought. 

More kids were on the way, so Tony herded the girls out of Morgan’s room and into the living room to greet them. They were all good kids, but their parents weren’t exactly thrilling to talk to, and Tony secretly hoped that the appearance of organized chaos would encourage them to drop off their children and leave as quickly as possible. It was just so hard to _ relate _ to any of the other parents. They’d start talking about something like how the copier at work got jammed, and Tony would be standing there thinking about aliens and explosions and the security of the entire Earth.

Loki got it. Loki knew what was out there, what they _ really _ stood to lose if the Avengers ever got too sloppy, if they didn’t keep an eye on their world and all of the worlds in contact with Earth, if they missed anything… 

Loki got it, and maybe that was why Tony kind of wished that he’d stayed over for the slumber party. Plus, the magic would be a cool touch for the haunted hallway.

By the time the pizza arrived, Dora had already crushed a poor pumpkin in her enthusiasm to clean out its seeds, and Asrun had patched it back together into some sort of Franken-pumpkin with her untrained magic, resulting in a tormented-looking, larger-than-life monstrosity. 

“Hey, Bluebell,” Tony ventured, balancing a precariously-tall stack of pizzas, “um… I thought your dad said no magic, kiddo.” The Frankenpumpkin appeared to be glaring at him, and he was kind of afraid that she’d accidentally brought the thing to life. 

“No magic, Uncle Tony,” she declared. “Just wished for him to get better!”

_ Okay. Make a note to keep an eye on that. _

One of the perks of being Tony Stark was that the little pizza shop around the corner didn’t mind ridiculous special orders. He’d had pizzas decked out in as Halloween-y a manner as standard pizza toppings would permit, some given little vampire fangs of pepperoni, some with jack o’lantern faces of olives, and some that simply said, in carefully-constructed letters of pepper and sausage, _ “Boo!” _

Maybe the kids would wind down a little once they were weighted down with pizza. He pulled Alex down from the bookshelf, where she’d taken up residence as the friendly local Spider-Man (after snapping a quick photo). Peter was going to get a kick out of that. “No climbing, Alex,” he said. “Mom won’t be very happy with me if I let you get squashed by a bookshelf.”

“Vanquished!” she cried dramatically, falling limp in his arms. She’d definitely been spending too much time with Loki’s oddly-Shakespearian twins. Still, he guessed it was good for her vocabulary development, at least. Dora and Asrun sounded like they walked right out of an SAT prep book, half the time. It tended to be unnerving.

“Good thing even vanquished heroes get pizza.”

Dora was standing on the table when he turned around, a guilty expression on her face and a slice of pizza already in the hand that wasn’t clutching her toy hammer. “Oops,” she declared, and then she jumped and ran off, her sister and one of the other kids - Katie, maybe? - racing after her, giggling. They must’ve all been in on the pizza-stealing scheme, Tony decided.

“Morgan,” he said, dropping his Spider-Daughter upside-down on the couch, “could you go get them? It’s time to eat, and then we can start the movies.”

She took off after them, clutching her pointy witch hat to keep it from flying off. “Time to eat,” she roared, chasing them back out into the living room only a moment later. “Watch out, or I’ll hex your butts off!”

Asrun stopped in her tracks, apparently intrigued by the idea. “You can hex butts off?’” she asked, and Tony thought that would be a perfect time to intervene, turning on the TV and ushering them over to the couch, where Alex and the rest of their friends had already settled in with their festive paper plates full of pizza and chips.

“No hexing,” he said, setting her onto the couch beside her sister. “Hexing people isn’t nice.”

“What about if they’re bad people?” Morgan asked. “What if they’re vampires or zombies or werewolves, and they’re gonna eat us—”

“Hexing people is _ only _ okay if you’re in danger,” Tony amended, because who was he to say that Asrun would never need to hex someone? He knew his daughters were going to learn to defend themselves, so he couldn’t really blame Loki for teaching his how to hex bad guys. 

“What’s hexing?” a girl named Jada asked, pushing up her ladybug mask.

“It’s magic,” Asrun said. “Witchy magic.”

Jada scoffed. “Magic isn’t _ real.” _

_ Oh, no, _ Tony thought. The twins pretty much worshipped their dad and his powers, and he could see a very Thor-like battle light spark in Dora’s eyes. 

“Magic IS real,” she said. “My daddy is the BEST.”

“No, it isn’t. _ My _ daddy says it’s make-believe. You’re too little to know.”

“Little?” Dora cried, and Tony passed her a bottle of Harry Potter-themed pumpkin juice, hoping that the unusual bottle cap would distract her.

“Speaking of magic,” he said, “which is definitely real, kid - tell your dad he’s wrong on that one - let’s get this party started. Sound good?”

The kids cheered, and Tony put on _ Monster House. _ If the evening didn’t get too crazy, he figured he could take them down the ‘Monster Tower’ hall that Peter had helped him put together earlier in the week, but given how rowdy they’d been so far, he wasn’t sure if it was a good idea. He might have to confiscate the toy weapons, if he did, in case Dora decided to start hammering away at his walls in an effort to be heroic.

He was almost tempted to call Peter, but he was sure that a slumber party for elementary schoolers was likely the last place a young adult would want to spend his Halloween. He had houses to TP, parties to go to… normal college kid stuff. Peter shouldn’t have to miss out on doing regular twenty-something things just because he saved the world every now and then. 

“Daddy, come sit by _ me,” _ Morgan said, patting the narrow space between her and her sister. “It’s _ my _ party.”

“It’s our party,” Tony replied, pretending that he was going to sit on Alex, who laughed and pushed him away. He settled between his daughters, his arms spread out on the back of the couch. “The Super-Scary Stark Slumber Party.”

“It’s not _ too _ scary,” one of the kids sitting on the floor said. “I’m not scared.”

Tony had no choice but to take that as a personal challenge. _ You will be, _he thought. If his haunted hallway didn’t make them lose their sugar-high little minds, then he was going to be genuinely disappointed. 

The movie was nearly halfway over when there was a knock on the penthouse door. None of the kids seemed to even notice. “Don’t all jump up at once,” he said, passing his bag of popcorn to Morgan. “I’ll get it.”

He needed to remember that he was wasting his sarcasm on elementary schoolers.

When he opened the door, a lean figure in a black, spandex costume stood in the hallway, waving awkwardly at the security camera. He spun on his heel when he heard the door open, and even though he was wearing some kind of toothy, white-eyed monster mask, Tony could tell it was Peter. “What are you supposed to be?”

Peter pulled off his mask. “Venom. Too scary?”

“Not for these kids,” Tony replied. “But be careful, because we’ve got a team of superheroes already assembled, so you might be in for a crushing defeat.”

“Who are _ you _ supposed to be?” Peter asked.

“Are you serious? I’m very obviously Obi-Wan Kenobi. Kids these days…”

“Shouldn’t you have a lightsaber?”

Tony winced. “It worked a little too well. Pepper said a functional laser-sword around the kids would probably be a bad idea. I thought you had plans.”

“I did,” Peter said. “I mean, I _ do. _ But I thought I’d swing by.”

“You could take over, and I could go out partying with the college crowd,” Tony offered, stepping aside. “Doesn’t that sound like fun?”

Alex was sneaky enough that, when she suddenly popped out from behind the ottoman to tackle Peter’s legs, Tony was entirely surprised. Of course, she immediately countered this by yelling, _ “Attack!” _ as she did, but it was still some impressive maneuvering for a five-year-old. 

“Spider-Man?” Peter enthused, somehow avoiding being tripped. He scooped her into the air. “Can I have your autograph?”

“Yes! Did I scare you?”

“I’m _ so _ scared,” he began, but then the rest of the mini-Avengers descended, all clamoring to show off their costumes to Spider-Man - apparently Iron Man wasn’t as _ hip with the kids _ these days - and Tony jumped at the opportunity to run into the kitchen for a coffee. 

He was going to need it.

When he came back into the living room, the movie had been paused, and Peter was hanging upside-down from his ceiling. Tony sighed. He’d been doing that a lot lately. _ Fatherhood. _

“Oops,” Peter said, dropping to the ground. He pointed to Morgan. “She said I had to, because it’s her party. If I didn’t, she was gonna hex my butt off.”

The girls giggled. _ Oh, to be young again, _ Tony thought, _ and so easily entertained by the word ‘butt.’ _“Nobody’s hexing anyone, and that goes double for you, Blueberry.” When he pointed at Asrun, trying to look as stern and convincing as her father did on the (rare) occasions he decided to be a disciplinarian, her innocent smile only served to make him more nervous. At least Andora wasn’t quite as likely to have an untamed magical incident… but she did have that hammer.

He walked Peter to the door, once they’d pried most of his admirers free, and Tony handed him an unusually-large bag of candy corn that he’d specifically ordered just to see the look on the kid’s face. “Happy Halloween,” he said. “Don’t eat it all in one place.”

“I, uh… I think I’ll be good. Hey, did they go in the haunted hallway yet?”

“Not yet, I’ve gotta try to set the mood. Alexandra has already told me that I can’t scare her, and I can’t back down from that kind of challenge. I’m not going to be intimidated by someone who can’t even tie her own shoelaces.”

“Well, good luck terrorizing the children,” Peter said, hefting the bag of candy corn. 

“Hey, be safe,” Tony said, enjoying the chance to be in dad-mode. “Don’t do anything I would do.”

“Maybe you should’ve dressed up as Aunt May.”

“Funny, kid.”

He hurried back into the living room, relieved to find that everyone was still in one piece… but the Frankenpumpkin was _ absolutely _ glaring at him, and it kind of freaked him out. All of the kids were gathered around a girl in a vampire costume named Izzie, inspecting her plastic vampire fangs, clearly in the middle of some debate.

“They aren’t real,” Morgan said. 

“They are, too.”

“No,” Asrun declared, leaning close to the other little girl’s face. _ “These _ are real.” She opened her mouth, sprouting pointy little fangs as her eyes turned bloodred, and vampire-kid burst into tears, apparently not expecting quite that level of _ realness _ at a Halloween slumber party. 

Tony hurried back into the living room, waving a rolling pin and oven mitt. “Cookie time!” he declared. “Who wants cookies?”

He was good at multitasking - it came along with the territory, being a genius, billionaire, (former) playboy, philanthropist, husband, father, and semi-retired superhero. Not that he liked to brag, or anything. He managed to get the girls ushered into the kitchen and calmed down Izzie, reassuring her that Asrun was in fact _ not _ a vampire out to drink her blood, and they made some pretty amazing pumpkin sugar cookies without anyone chopping off a finger or sticking their hands in the oven.

Frankenpumpkin started groaning while they were still in the kitchen waiting for the cookies to cool, though, so Tony quickly found himself edging back into the living room with the whole slumber party trying to hide behind him. “Daddy?” Morgan whispered. “Is it supposed to do that?”

“Don’t think so.”

Dora raised her hammer. 

“I _ like _ him,” Alex said, trying to wrestle it away from her. “He’s funny.”

_ Call Loki right now and get him to take care of this eldritch gourd abomination, _one part of Tony’s brain insisted, while another part argued that he shouldn’t really want Loki to know that he was freaked out by a pumpkin. “We can leave Frankenpumpkin,” he said. “As long as it’s just… sitting there. It’s not going to grow legs and start running around, right, Blue?”

“Right,” Asrun replied, nodding emphatically that her tiara nearly fell off her head. “Should he—”

“I don’t think so,” Tony quickly interrupted. “Let’s finish the movie, kiddos… and then, guess what?”

“What?” they all cried. 

“Prepare for the _ Terror _ Tower,” he said, doing his very best spooky-storyteller cackle. “The Hallway of Horrors—” Their high-pitched squealing cut him off, and he couldn’t tell if it was mostly from excitement, or fear. Either way, he gave himself a mental pat on the back for being such a convincing actor.

By the time they made it up to the hallway, it was getting close to midnight, and Tony made sure to fill their heads with stories about how Halloween magic was strongest at midnight, and how the Tower was most _ definitely _ haunted. Several of the slumber party kids already looked ready to jump out of their skins just from the thick fog that swirled through the hall, and the flickering lights and spooky, atmospheric music.

He was pretty impressed with his handiwork. There was a sealed-off glass-walled lab covered with caution tape and fake bloody handprints, with an evil laugh emanating from inside whenever anyone came close to peek inside. A vampire popped down from the ceiling once they’d all gathered around the barred door, and over half of the kids screamed, including Morgan. Alex, however, was a tough nut to crack, and she remained impassive.

A horde of tiny robotic spiders scuttled down the hall next, which the girls were so freaked out by that Tony didn’t even mind when Dora crushed one in her panic. He had Peter to thank for that one; the kid was getting _ really _ good with his own designs.

Jada and Izzie clung to each other and started crying when a goo monster bubbled up from the middle of the floor, and Tony had to quickly usher them around to prevent a traffic jam. He was excited to get to the next lab, which he’d made to look like an old, abandoned tank of water filled with piranhas - and the special surprise, the Creature from the Black Lagoon. 

But herding the kids was like herding cats, and before they could get there, there was a gurgling, growling sound from one of the darkened doorways down the hall, and then a figure burst forth, his arms outstretched, his Jedi robes tattered and torn. Not only was the zombie-creature the spitting image of himself, but it was perfect down to the last detail, including the clothes he was wearing right then and there. _ “Brains,” _ the zombie-clone hissed, staggering towards them. 

Tony yelled in surprise, and so did all of the kids, even tough-as-nails little Alex, who clung to his leg as if her life depended on it… and maybe it did, because he was _ absolutely _ positive that he hadn’t included an undead version of himself in his haunted hallway. His first instinct was to hurl his flashlight at the thing, but it passed right through, and then behind him, a quiet, amused voice said, _ “Boo.” _

The girls’ screaming nearly burst his eardrums, and when Loki emerged from the shadows smirking, Tony wasn’t sure whether he wanted to high-five him or punch him. _ Maybe both. _ “What the―” he began, but then he remembered that he was supposed to be Iron Dad right now, and Iron Dad refrained from yelling anything _ too _ profane in front of his kids. “What was that?”

Loki’s girls were already jumping around him, trying to get him to pick them up - though Andora did take the precaution of whacking him in the shin with her hammer, just to be sure he was real. He scooped them up, one in each arm. Half of the slumber party was still in hysterics, but Morgan and Alex looked thrilled, at least, so Tony figured he couldn’t be too upset that he’d had his thunder stolen.

“I thought I’d drop by to check on things, Stark,” Loki said, “and since the party was headed this way, I decided it couldn’t hurt to add my own personal flair to things.” He grinned. “God of Trickery, as you said.”

“Best haunted hallway _ ever,” _ Morgan declared. “But don’t ever be a real zombie, Daddy. It was gross.”

“I’ll do my best.”

He was able to convince the girls to calm down, ushering them back to the penthouse, where he popped in another movie and set out a tray of the now-cooled sugar cookies. Loki trailed after him, stopping short when he caught sight of Frankenpumpkin. “Oh, yeah,” Tony said. “I almost forgot. _ Your _ kids are responsible for that one, Frosty.”

Loki was clearly impressed. “We did read Cinderella only a few nights ago,” he said. “I suppose the pumpkin carriage might’ve been inspiring. Do you want me to get rid of it?”

“No!” Asrun cried. “Keep him!”

“Only until midnight,” Loki said, kneeling down beside her. “Alright, princess? Then he will be just another pumpkin again.”

She sighed. “Okay, Daddy.”

“Thank God.” Tony pushed the table where the pumpkin sat a little further away with his foot, grimacing. “I don’t think I could take a full night of that thing. I’m guessing you aren’t going to hang around, now that you’ve sown your chaos?”

“I’m afraid not.” He took a few cookies from the tray. “This does seem like my sort of party, though. Perhaps next year, I can summon a few demons.”

“Yeah, we’ll have to see what Pepper says about that.”

Loki shrugged. “I’m only offering to enrich the atmosphere. Oh! I know what would be even better; we could take them to Hel.”

“That’s definitely not happening.”

“Your loss,” Loki replied, snagging another cookie or two for the road. “Oh, and before I forget, young Peter asked for me to record your face if I _ did _ manage to frighten you tonight.” He pulled a cell phone out of his pocket, flipping the screen around. 

Tony groaned. The picture was the most unflattering candid he’d ever seen in his life, and that was counting quite a few terrible paparazzi photos. “So, he was in on it? Traitors, everywhere.”

“He sent me a message, actually, and suggested that I add a little dramatic flair to your evening. Something about ‘candy corn’ payback, whatever that means.”

“Of course he did.”

Loki leaned over the couch and ruffled his daughters’ hair. “Goodnight, girls,” he said. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

They blew him kisses and waved him off, and Tony settled back down on the couch, a little relieved that the evening’s excitement was over. Alex snuggled against his side, trying to shove a cookie into his mouth, and succeeding in getting crumbs and frosting all over his Kenobi costume. “Daddy?” she whispered.

“Yes, Alexandra the Great?”

“That was _ really _ scary. Really really scary.”

“Yeah? Did you have fun?”

She nodded emphatically. 

He kissed the top of her head. “I’m glad, kiddo.”

Morgan sprawled across her end of the couch, resting her pointy-toed witch shoes on his lap. “Best Halloween ever, Daddy,” she said, sighing in contentment. 

“Best Halloween ever,” Tony agreed. “No doubt about it.”


End file.
